Happy Friendship Day

Friendship is the essence of orkut, and what better way to celebrate it than with a doodle for International Friendship Day?

Take a look at your friends list on orkut. Is there anyone you haven't talked to in a while? Send them a quick scrap and let them know you're thinking about them. Or, even better, set up a video chat so that you can hang out with them face-to-face.

Recently, we've launched a bunch of different features that we hope have made it easier for you to make new friends and keep in touch with the people you already know and care about. We're always open to new ideas of ways orkut could be even 'friendlier' (excuse the pun), so if you've got suggestions, be sure to let us know.

Hope you enjoy the day and thanks for being such a good friend to orkut!

Posted by Rodrigo Paiva, orkut operations team

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Private scraps on orkut!

A few weeks ago we launched some changes to scraps on orkut, but we heard your comments and went back to the drawing board. We've finished our homework, and here you can see what we created:


Want to keep something in secret?
Now you can choose to send a private scrap to a friend. On the new orkut, before posting a scrap, just change its visibility to "private", and that scrap will remain visible only to you and the person receiving the scrap, so it stays completely secret.

If you don’t change the default options, your scraps will have exactly the same behavior as before, so there’s nothing to worry about, things only change if that's what you want.


Privacy labels
We take privacy very seriously, and that's why we're making it absolutely clear who else can see the content you’re looking at on orkut. Every scrap (as well as photos, videos, etc) will now have a privacy label, so you can easily tell who else can see it. These are exactly the same as the privacy levels that we already had on photos: private, friends and public.


Still curious? Then visit this page about Private Scraps to learn more! We hope you really enjoy this feature, and don’t forget to share your feedback with us. We have many other cool launches coming out soon, so stay tuned for updates.

Posted by Victor Ribeiro, orkut product management director

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Viljandi Folk Festival

If you happen to find yourself walking through Viljandi, Estonia, don't be surprised if you're overwhelmed by the sound of music pulsing through the air. This just means that you've stumbled onto one of the country's largest music festivals.

Traditionally held at the end of July, Viljandi Folk Festival completely transforms the city: thousands of people, mostly students, fill the streets, checking out parties, concerts, and shows. To celebrate this festival, the orkut team decided to make a special doodle:

If you'd like to learn more about it, join the Viljandi Folk Festival community. You can have your own personal music festival on orkut by adding the "My Music" app to your profile. Don't forget that you can also join the thousands of music communities on orkut and learn more about your favorite artists. Enjoy the celebration!

Posted by Karl Pae, Google AdWords team member and a fellow Estonian

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Share everything you like from the web

We recently introduced the "orkut share" bookmarklet, a cool way for you to share any content on the web that you like. With "orkut share", every time you see an interesting page, photo, video, or virtually any content on the web, all you need to do is click a "share" button and your friends on orkut will see it.

To enjoy this feature, just add the bookmarklet to your browser visiting www.orkut.com/share


Check out this video to see how it works:

Want people to share your webpage or blog on orkut? You can do that too! To add “orkut share” buttons on your pages (like the one below), just visit www.orkut.com/howtoshare

Happy sharing, folks!

Posted by Sagari Venkata, orkut operations team

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Making it easier to see photos in full-screen

Some time ago we announced an improved photo viewing experience on orkut. We heard from you that the ability to look at photos full-screen was the most exciting feature, so we decided to make it even easier to use.

When you see an update on your homepage saying that a friend has uploaded some photos, just click the "view in full-screen" button, and an automated full-screen view of the album will begin.

Then just sit back and enjoy the slideshow. You can hover over the thumbnail strip at the bottom to enlarge a particular image at anytime:

While you're still in full-screen view, try playing around with some of the keyboard controls (like Home, End, left and right arrows, Spacebar, and Escape), to see what happens.

Excited? Don't forget to share your photos too, so you and your friends can enjoy them together.

Posted by Ariel, orkut operations team

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Happy Obon Festival

Wondering why the orkut logo is floating on a series of paper lanterns today? Hint: it's not because we wanted to improve the sign-in page's ambiance.

Today's doodle is inspired by the Obon Festival, a highly traditional event (over 500 years old!) in Japan and around the world honoring one's ancestors. Each year, throngs of people gather to witness and participate in the Bon Odori folk dance and launch paper lanterns on rivers– hoping to light the return path of their ancestor's souls.

It's a pretty incredible festival to experience, but you don't have to be in Japan to participate. Join the Japan community on orkut and find out if there's an Obon Festival celebration taking place near you.

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google designer

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Happy Festival of San Fermin!

If you're in Pamplona, Spain between July 6 and 14, you'll be able to watch one of the world's more interesting events, the Festival of San Fermin.

Commonly referred to as the Running of the Bulls, it attracts thousands of people from all the world. The highlight is the "encierro," a half a mile route through the historical streets of Pamplona where people do all they can to escape from the bulls.

This year, we decided the orkut logo should participate in the festivities:

To learn more about the San Fermin Festival, join the Spain community. If you're actually participating this year, be sure to upload your photos so that your orkut friends can see all of your outtakes!

Posted by Barbara Veloso, Google designer

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What's new on orkut?

Since we launched the new version of orkut, back in 2009, so much has changed around here! Because the new orkut was built on top of cutting edge technologies, we were able to add cool new features and improvements to orkut like never before.

With launches happening every month, we don't want you to miss out on any action! That's why we created a one-stop link for all the monthly updates on what's new on orkut: www.orkut.com/whatsnew

This link was added to the right column of this blog, and will also be added to the orkut footer itself, so you can keep watching that space to see what's been keeping us busy.

You can also follow all the updates on that page by subscribing to it on Google Reader. Stay tuned!

Posted by Sagari Venkata, orkut operations team

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Happy 4th of July!

Roll out the barbecue and grab the fireworks because it's Independence Day in the United States. The 4th of July is one of the most cherished holidays in the US, a time to celebrate the country's history, light fireworks, eat great food and relax with family and friends.

There's no way the Americans on the orkut team would let this date slip by, so we put together this special doodle to join the fun:

If you're also having a barbecue or lighting fireworks today, don't forget to share those photos with your family and friends!

Posted by Virginia Roman, Google editorial team

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Le Tour de France has started

Think riding a bike is easy? Try riding one for 2240 miles with only 2 days of rest. Sound crazy? Well if you’re competing in this year’s Tour de France, that’s exactly what you’ll be doing.

This year, the Tour de France is celebrating its 97th anniversary, and is certain to continue its tradition of bringing together some of the world’s top cyclists for a fierce and grueling competition.

It’s a sight to behold, so the orkut team thought we’d create a doodle to pay tribute to all of the athletes and their fans:

Join the Tour de France community to get to know the others like you who are excited about the race. And don't leave your bike in the garage, include it in your routine and forget about that traffic!

Posted by Carlos Aranha, Googler and bike commuter


UPDATE: Experience the Tour de France like never before! Follow Team HTC - Columbia in real-time as they make their way through the 3,642 kilometers of the Tour de France. The nine riders on Team HTC - Columbia are carrying HTC Legend phones that use My Tracks to capture their location along with their power, heart rate, cadence and speed. Visit www.google.com/mytrackstour and see a Google Map showing the riders' location and their telemetry data.

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